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Thursday, January 28, 2016

This
is one of THE most powerful devotional hymns out there anywhere. The
text is so thoughtfully deep that most congregational worship leaders
avoid it… partly because it can hardly be taken in. Churches who lean
more toward the contemplative will find it more useful in public
worship. However, it is a text we should all read regularly to keep us
in check with our relationship with Christ – who here is called the
“loved Unseen.”

The invisibleness of our Savior makes
him more difficult for some to believe in. I think I get that; but at
the same time, it is his concealed nature that intrigues me and causes
my faith to work overtime. Though unperceived by others, his presence is
fully realized.

According to this hymnline from the
final stanza, when we walk with the Lord in the light of his Word, all
is at peace… and “thus” (in that way) we journey alongside Christ.

The
next line in this hymn: “Leaning on thee, my God, guided along the
road, nothing between.” How beautifully put. Another hymn-writer said,
“Nothing between my soul and my Savior.” I think we get the picture: a
relationship so tight that nothing comes between us – attached at the
heart, so to speak.

Unlike Jimmy Stewart’s made-up
friend “Harvey,” my unseen companion is real, and I don’t mind walking
along life’s road, knowing full well that he is ever with me and that I
find myself near to the heart of God.

I couldn’t find an online recording of this hymn. That’s sad in itself. Surely Cynthia Clawson has recorded it!

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Our
God truly is “one of a kind.” No one else is perfectly holy. I think
that goes without saying… but it cannot go without singing!

Every
congregation of all denominations knows – and probably loves – this
great hymn that reminds us of the “otherness” of God. It points us to
that mysterium tremendum: that overwhelming mystery of who God is.

Besides God, there is none perfect. Only God is holy.

In the words of St. Nicolas Cabasilas, our God is
- more affectionate than any friend,
- more just than any ruler,
- more loving than any father,
- more a part of us than our own limbs,
- more necessary to us than our own heart.

This
one-of-a-kind holy otherness is what attracts many of us to God. We
stand awestruck in God’s presence, finding it unfathomable that there
should be One like this. Sturdy hymns like “Holy, Holy, Holy” usher us
into that presence; few jazzed-up arrangements maintain that sense of
awe – same words, same basic melody, but not the same astonishment!

Beyond
that, however, we are equally amazed that such a holy Other could be
interested in us… that God would condescend to humankind to draw us to
himself. It is awe upon awe – wonder of wonders – truly amazing!

Such
awareness puts us in our place and raises him to his rightful place:
high and holy. Besides him, there is none other qualified. Perfect in power, in love and purity.

Tuesday, January 26, 2016

At
this time of year when in much of the country the weather outside is frightful, skies are
overcast, and record lows are being chronicled, it just seems
appropriate to use this hymnline that closes the refrain of one of those
good old toe-tapping gospel songs.

Many of us suffer
from depression at differing levels. Fortunately, for most of us this
downheartedness is shallow and short-lived; for others – even strong
Christians – melancholy may be a daily state of being. Some live in
darker shades of gray. This is not something to take lightly. Our
response should never be flippant or unconcerned; “just get over it”
should not be our attitude. Honest, non-condescending encouragement is
probably our best approach.

For those of us who are not
at those deepest depths of despair, turning our eyes upon Jesus may be
just the thing to return brightness to our gloom – to trade sunshine for
our darkness. So often in our grasping for a glimmer of hope, the
smiling face of Christ passes before our spiritual eyes, our attitudes
improve, and we are lifted from nighttime to noonday bright.

I’m reminded of the hopeful Psalm passage: “We may weep throughout the night, but with the morning comes joy.” (30:5b)

The
day may be dreary and the long night may be weary, but be reassured
that our Savior cares. May his smiling face come to all of us to redeem
us from the pit… to pull us out and bring sunshine to our souls. Then
may there be music in our souls today, a carol to our King!

Monday, January 25, 2016

Hymn: “Why Do I Sing about Jesus?” – Words & Music by Albert A Ketchum (1894- ?)
Tune: KETCHUM

With
so little known about its writer, this has become a favorite gospel
song for many… including me. I guess I’m partial to all hymns about
singing, but I remember being drawn to this one early on in my church
life. Perhaps the skating-rink-waltz attracted me!?

The refrain that asks why I sing about Jesus and why he is so precious to me provides a straight-ahead answer: “He is my Lord and my Savior. Dying, he set me free.” There are times we need to sing the truths of our salvation experience, sharing with any who might need to hear.

Today’s
hymnline opens the second stanza. “What would it take for you to
believe in Jesus?” is a question we may have uttered while sharing our
faith with a seeker. For Ketchum – and for many of US – all it took was
observing how wonderfully good Jesus is. We saw that in scripture, we
heard about it from Sunday School teachers and pastors; some of us
observed it in great works of art… even music!

However,
the place most people will get a glimpse of the goodness of Christ is
through his followers: us. We are constantly under observation by those
who have yet to come to a personal faith experience. For some of those
who scrutinize our actions and attitudes, our consistency may be all
they need; our non-verbal witness may be sufficient to usher them into
the Kingdom.

Then, those new believers can stand and sing this hymnline… and mean it!

Friday, January 22, 2016

Hymn: “Take Time to Be Holy” – William D. Longstaff (1822-1894)
Tune: HOLINESS

For some of us, this hymnline could be an addendum to whatever else we may have resolved to do in the new year.

The
truth is that some of our spiritual resolutions are more filled with
hope than determination. If we look closely, we may find that embedded
within them is our intention to move ahead no matter what – in other
words, we may have already set out to run ahead of God!

God
wants to lead us, and leadership always happens from the front or from
the side. Urging and prodding happen from the back. Strength and
empowerment come from beneath.

There have been times I
have run ahead of God, realized what I’ve done, and waited for him to
come and push me on ahead. Fortunately, he has come to my rescue many
times when I’ve plodded on at my own pace and with my own dreams. It is
certainly providential that he should be there for us, coming alongside,
and ultimately moving to his proper place in the relationship: as
Leader.

Some surge of excitement or creativity may
overwhelm us, especially in these first weeks of a new year. We may
consider ourselves ‘led’ into some realm into which there has been no
leadership – no calling – no “Come, follow me.”

Let’s
take that selfless approach and not try so hard to be in charge. Let’s
play Follow-the-Leader and see where that takes us. When this time of
year rolls around in twelve months, I think we might find ourselves
further ahead than feel right now.

This hymnline from a familiar carol does three things:
1. It calls everyone from every social strata to believe that “this, this is Christ the King.”
2. It tells us that THIS King comes bearing salvation from the throne of his Father.
3. It inspires all people whose hearts are capable of loving to make a
place in their hearts for the King to sit enthroned – in control.

I’d
like to do that as we celebrate Epiphany (the arrival of the Magi). I
would call everybody everywhere to forget about their ‘place’ in this
world’s societal hierarchy to come to Jesus… to take ownership of their
place in the Kingdom. I’d like to remind them that this salvation is
brought to them as a free gift from the hand of Almighty God through the
pierced hands of his Redeeming Son. Then I would encourage them to
invite Christ into their heart as controller of their thoughts and
actions; I might even go off-season here with another hymn text: “If you
are tired of the load of your sin, let Jesus come into your heart.”

I’ve
never cared for canned evangelistic presentations: those ‘plan of
salvation’ gimmicks. But in this case, these three sentences from a
Christmas carol give us an outline for leading people into the Kingdom…
moving them from darkness to light, from death to life.

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

"Guide us to thy perfect light."
Carol: “We Three Kings” – Words & Music by John Henry Hopkins (1820-1891)
Tune: KINGS OF ORIENT

My
mother (Hedy) was the resident director of the annual Christmas Play at
First Baptist Church in Pigeon Forge. If any of you wonder where I got
my proclivity toward dramatizing biblical events, you need go no
further. Each year’s production was pretty much like the previous. I
remember how while the choir sang “It Came upon the Midnight Clear,” the
angels always interpreted the text with hand movements -- one of which
was forming a circle with their arms at “comes round the age of gold,” and leaning forward during “when peace shall over all the earth…” Why do things like that stick in your mind?

Each
year she had to employ three men from within the choir to sing “We
Three Kings.” They all sang the first and last stanzas, and each did a
solo verse based on the gift they carried: gold, frankincense or myrrh.
Ours weren’t quite as much fun as the one below featuring Hugh Jackman,
but the point was pretty well dramatized, especially for a 1950’s
low-budget production.

Even as a child, watching and
listening to my mother direct this cast of her peers, I was drawn to
THIS hymnline spoken by the bath-robed wise men to the star of wonder,
star of night with royal beauty bright: “Guide us to thy perfect Light.” Early on I was learning by osmosis that the Christ Child was the perfect Light of the World.

It
is strange how we bring those carol texts with us from our earliest
years to our latter days as saints. I’m glad we do, because those
tidbits we have learned from our singing/listening-to-singing have
enriched our lives, deepened our faith, brought us to belief and
service. In other words, they have guided us to the perfect Light.

Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Carol: “As with Gladness Men of Old” – William C. Dix (1837-1898)
Common Tune: DIX

We're still in the season of Epiphany - that time in the church year when we talk about Magi, wise men, travelers
from afar, etc. We are still fascinated with this scripturally
un-numbered group’s seeking of the Christ Child. Part of that
fascination comes from the fact that they must have been people of great
means to make this long trek from east Asia; after all, we’ve learned
from pictures that they traveled with quite the entourage… like the
Crawley family at Downton Abbey! We’re also caught up in their
star-gazing hobby or profession that actually panned out for them; they
studied the star alignments and deciphered their meaning… ultimately
leading them to the prophesied One whose star had gone before them. If you are like me, you may be enamored of their desire to worship the King born at
Bethlehem in the land of Judah.

We like their haggling
with Herod, their continuing their search, their being warned in a
dream, etc. But most of all, we marvel at the moment when their worship
culminates in their bowing down on their faces before the Christ Child,
offering their costliest treasures. It’s one of the most awe-invoking
moments in the telling of the birth event – maybe in all of scripture!

When
we make our offerings with holy joy – not begrudgingly or by force –
then it truly is an act of pure worship: nothing held back. As we sing
this carol, we are saying that we want to be true worshipers like the
Magi – people who go to great lengths to find God, and who act
appropriately and generously when he is found.

Many
times after we have that kind of close encounter of the highest kind, we
are led by “another way” for our own protection and our own good.

Tuesday, January 5, 2016

"He is still the undefiled, but no more a stranger."
Carol: “Gentle Mary Laid Her Child” – Joseph Simpson Cook (1859-1933)
Tune: TEMPUS ADEST FLORIDUM

This
is one of those story-telling carols of which there are many! In stanza
one the Baby is born; in stanza two the angels appear and the shepherds
arrive, etc. The teaching point at the center of this carol, however,
is the sinlessness of Christ – at his birth, during his earthly life,
and (seemingly) beyond!

Hymns and carols have always
helped us understand theology and/or tenets of the faith, and here Cook
tucked away two references to the fact that Jesus was un-touched by sin
entering this world or living in it – a feat of which none of the rest
of us can boast.

In the first line of the carol, we sing, “There he lay the undefiled, to the world a stranger.”
In THIS hymnline of the last stanza, not only is he still undefiled, he
is no longer a stranger! Not only is he a celebrity of sorts – most
everybody in the world has heard of him – but we can get to know him
personally as the reigning Son of God… and we can join with all the
earth in the praise of this Baby laid so gently by his mother on a bed
of hay.

Speaking of theology, we are able to get to
know Christ partly because of his sinlessness. You just cannot say a bad
thing about the way he lived; he cannot be penalized for any
infraction. (I’ve obviously watched too much football this week!) His
spotless record made it possible for him to stand in for us as the
sacrificial Lamb.

We will never become sinless during the new year, but we can become less sinful. Now THAT is an achievable resolution.

P.S. - I’ve
mentioned Christmastide a couple of times and want to clarify that a
bit for those of you who aren’t “up” on the Church Year. Christmastide
is commonly called the Twelve Days of Christmas. This includes eleven
days after Christmas and culminates on the twelfth day which is
Epiphany… the day we celebrate the coming of the Magi. We observe that
in worship on the Sunday nearest that twelfth day – or the first Sunday
in the new year. The season of Sundays after the Epiphany don’t end this
year until February 23; these include the celebration of the
presentation of Christ at the Temple and his baptism. I won’t, by the
way try to fill up another month and a half with Epiphany hymns!!!

Now
that Christmas Day has moved past us, as we close out Christmastide and
move into Epiphany, this old German carol seems an appropriate text to
land on. Cherished by Lutherans, this may be one with which you are not
all that familiar… as has been true with many things during the
Advent/Christmas seasons – because there’s such a vast amount of hymnody
attached to these times of the Christian calendar.

The first lines of this carol read as follows:O Morning Star, how fair and bright! You shine with God’s own truth and light, Aglow with grace and mercy.

Sometimes
used as one of the anticipation songs of Advent, this one often looks
back at the fair and bright Christ child, calling on us to look
‘visually’ at the visage of the newborn King. If we approach today’s
hymnline (from the second stanza) in that way – as looking into the
Baby’s face – we may “see” him from a different angle.

After
all the hoopla of Christmas, this hymnline is also a great prayer to
face the new year. If indeed Christ shone brightly at the center of who
we are – that part that controls us – becoming in us an undying flame,
we SHOULD be better people for it, shouldn’t we?

Hymnlines - Hemlines: Get it?! :)

About Me

A native of Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, went to high school with Dolly Parton... and am still friends with her sister Stella who was "most talented" with me in our graduating class of 1967! Was a Southern Baptist for most of my life,am currently affiliated with Cooperative Baptists. Have worked in Baptist and Presbyterian churches - basically consider myself a Baptiterian!

Love words (texts). Am a published hymn-writer, anthem-text writer and composer. Into live theater, museums and antique stores. Enjoy good movies and PBS dramas.

Married to Carlita - Two bonus sons: Dustin,and Clint and his wife Sherry with our two grandsons Kyle and Carson who just happen to live close by!